Thursday, February 4, 2010

A Tokyo elementary school teacher is in hot water after he established a reign of terror in his second-grade classroom, it was learned Saturday.

The 25-year-old male teacher at the Shibuya Municipal Sasazuka Elementary School was stripped of his responsibilities as homeroom teacher after two students refused to attend school from late October because of corporal punishment.

"There is no place for physical punishment in the classroom. I am upset by the things students had to endure under him," School Principal Tamiko Chuma said.

However, she did not say why she failed to act earlier despite receiving a number of complaints from the parents of the students about his violent behavior since the summer term. The instructor, whose name is being withheld, has been on "holiday," the principal added.

According to parents as well as school officials, the problem teacher started showing his violent tendencies as soon as he became the homeroom teacher -- despite having only one year of teaching experience -- in April this year.

When telling students to behave themselves, the teacher, who has a dan in judo, would kick the wall or pretended to punch them. "I am not using violence because I've made no contact with you," one of the pupils was once told by the teacher during the summer term.

At the time, several parents reportedly asked the school to take action against the teacher for using foul language and hitting a pupil in the head with a stick but school administrators ignored them.

The level of violence visibly escalated in the autumn term. Hitting students with a broom handle or a wooden stick became the norm, while some students became the victims of karate kicks and judo choking techniques in front of their classmates.

The stress of studying under him apparently become so unbearable to some that one of the pupils began to develop a nervous twitch.

The bullying teacher was finally removed from the classroom after the parents of a boy he held in a choke made a formal complaint to the school in October this year.